This invention relates to a centrifuge for the cleaning of a liquid, in particular a lubricant oil of an internal combustion engine. The centrifuge comprises a housing, at least one bearing element on the housing side and a rotor which is rotatably mounted thereon. The rotor is composed of at least two parts, an inner part for accommodating the bearing and a part for retaining impurities in an impurity collection zone, wherein the retaining part may be detached from the inner part for maintenance of the centrifuge.
Centrifuges of the aforementioned type have basically been known for many decades and are used in various applications. One of these applications is the cleaning of lubricating oil of internal combustion engines. Especially in this application and also in many others, the centrifuge presents a machine component which, on the one hand, is to be producible as economically as possible and, on the other hand, have good efficiency and a high endurance limit.
To achieve good efficiency, the smoothest possible bearing of the rotor is essential; to this end, the known centrifuges use either smooth bearings or anti-friction bearings or combinations thereof. For this, the rotor of the centrifuge is mostly mounted by means of two such bearings on the bearing element on the housing side. When a bearing is designed as a smooth bearing, until now, at least one separately produced bearing sleeve is to be built into the centrifuge. The bearing sleeve must either be built onto the bearing element on the housing side or into the rotor; for example, it must be pressed on or in. For some smooth bearing constructions, two smooth bearing sleeves must even be built in, wherein one first smooth bearing sleeve is to be applied onto the bearing element on the housing side and a second smooth bearing sleeve must be built into the rotor. Then, the two smooth bearing sleeves together form the smooth bearing. Since two smooth bearings are usually used, a total of four bearing sleeves thus must be, in the extreme case, separately manufactured and then installed. If anti-friction bearings are alternatively used, they must also be separately manufactured and installed. It is obvious that the parts required for forming the bearings cause relatively high manufacturing and installation expenditures which, overall, has an appreciable effect on the production costs of the centrifuge.